Seven Days of Westerplatte casts players as Polish soldiers defending their homeland against an overwhelming Nazi invasion.
Photograph: G3 Games

On 1 September, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish military depot at Westerplatte. The attack marked the beginning of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and with it the second world war.

For the small Polish garrison, the odds seemed overwhelming. Just 209 men found themselves besieged by over 3,000 German troops.

But the Poles weren’t about to give up without a fight. In the face of artillery bombardments, infantry assaults and terrifying dive-bombing raids, they held their ground for a week and provided a powerful symbol of resistance to millions of their compatriots.

This story of heroism, defiance and desperation fascinated Łukasz Woźniak, a 25-year-old board game designer from Poznan in west central Poland. His game Seven Days of Westerplatte – first published in 2013 and now receiving wider international distribution – attempts to capture the struggle, putting players in the shoes of Polish officers working together to repel a seemingly endless stream of Nazi aggressors.

“I wouldn’t say history is a great interest of mine,” Woźniak said. “I learned a bit in school and that was it.

“But the defence of the Westerplatte peninsula is a great historical event, and a great theme for a board game. The fact that such a small and under-armed force held their own for seven days is amazing to me, and I wanted to make a game that lets players feel some of the tension and stress of the real battle.”

Tension under fire

Stress is something that Seven Days of Westerplatte provides by the bucketload. Players find themselves on one side of a board divided by a narrow canal, guarding their base and its limited stockpile of supplies and ammunition. On the other, the German forces steadily advance. A brick wall is the only thing slowing their approach.

With each day that passes, the attack grows more ferocious. German infantry regiments march relentlessly towards the players before tearing apart their defences. Artillery units pound their position from the outskirts of town. Bombing raids strike without warning, reducing the defenders’ walls to rubble and leaving their morale in tatters.

Players must fight off advancing German units, rebuild shattered defences and make the best use of their limited supplies - all while ensuring their morale doesn’t collapse under fire. Photograph: Owen Duffy

“I’ve tried to balance the game so that it’s difficult on every level,” Woźniak said.

“There are five different tracks that the German units can attack from, and it’s very easy to get yourself into a difficult situation where all of those tracks are occupied. There are also more difficult units towards the end of the game, and fewer mortars and mines to help you deal with them.”

Woźniak’s design represents the fierce fighting of the battle, but it also includes a strong element of psychology. As the game progresses, soldiers are subjected to ever-greater stress. If the players can keep their spirits high, their defenders will move more quickly around the board and become more effective in combat. Let morale sink, though, and they’ll become exhausted and despondent, moving sluggishly and sacrificing some of their already limited supplies of shells and bullets.

As a result, players face a succession of difficult decisions. Should they fire on the enemies drawing close to their walls, or lay a landmine as a trap for units yet to enter the game? Do they need to rebuild their crumbling defences this turn, or is it safe to boost morale instead, leaving the repairs until later?

Communication, planning and quick reactions to the unpredictable German attacks are crucial, and even then, players are likely to face more simultaneous crises than they’re comfortably able to deal with.

Brutal simplicity

For all Seven Days of Westerplatte’s difficulty, though, its mechanics are incredibly simple. Where many designers of war-themed games get bogged down in opaque rules and confusing statistics, Woźniak strips away all unnecessary complications to leave something akin to the sort of tower defence games you might expect to find on your smartphone or tablet. It’s not so much a detailed simulation of war as a grim, gritty spin on Plants vs Zombies.

“Those kinds of games were an inspiration to me,” Woźniak said. “At first I just had this idea in my notebook about a game with cards representing units moving towards a defence line.

“I was actually thinking about a zombie-themed game. Maybe zombies would be more appealing to the public. But I consider myself a patriot, and I wanted to show the heroic aspect of the Polish side of world war two.

“I think games are a good way to start a conversation and interest people in a topic. My game doesn’t teach you very much, but it shows Polish soldiers fighting against the odds when their country was invaded and left with no help. We need to remember such events to honour them and to learn.”